The present invention relates generally to the licensing of electronic circuit designs programmably configured or designed into target electronic circuits, and more specifically to a system and method of securely licensing and reliably accounting for the delivery of licensed electronic circuit designs for use within target electronic circuits.
In recent years, as the size and complexity of Integrated Circuits (ICs) have increased, many circuit designers have found that it was no longer practical to design ICs using existing proprietary circuits. As a result, circuit designers adopted alternative approaches to IC design that allowed them to take advantage of advances in semiconductor technology, while satisfying the increased demand for electronic products.
One such approach adopted by circuit designers is known as “design re-use”, in which functional circuit blocks from one or more existing IC designs or third party providers are re-used to create a new IC design. This approach allows circuit designers to take advantage of new semiconductor technology and maintain increased productivity because they do not have to design all of the circuits within the IC. Design re-use can be employed to achieve product miniaturization and cost reduction, to enable a new product with several functions that were previously implemented within separate chips to be integrated into a single IC, and/or to create a new product that combines existing functions with newly designed capabilities.
Moreover, design re-use, along with advances in semiconductor technology and Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools, have made it possible to design a System on a Chip (SoC), in which an entire system can be designed and configured to fit within a single IC package. Such SoC designs typically employ high level functional circuit blocks, which are frequently referred to as “IP cores” because they generally comprise the Intellectual Property (IP) of the circuit designer or a third party provider(s). SoC design approaches employing IP cores have allowed circuit designers to accelerate product development cycles. For example, a circuit designer (the “IP user”) may obtain one or more IP cores from a third party provider (the “IP provider”), thereby obviating the need to design the core circuits themselves, and allowing integration of the core circuits at higher levels in the design development process.
When an IP provider provides an IP core to an IP user, the IP provider typically licenses the circuit design to the IP user for use in the development of an IC or system. The IP core can be licensed in one of two ways—on a “per-project” basis or on a “per-usage” basis. When licensed on a per-project basis, the license is generally granted to the IP user for use within a particular IC, product, or family of ICs or products, and a flat fee is charged for the duration of the project. When licensed on a per-usage basis, a fee or royalty is generally charged for each individual use of the IP core, often regardless of what product it is designed into, or the duration of the project.
Per-usage licensing is generally viewed as being fairer and more predictable than per-project licensing for both the IP provider and the IP user. For example, the flat fee required for per-project licensing is usually relatively high to cover the expected usage of the IP core over the project duration. Further, the IP provider and the IP user normally have to estimate both the expected product volume and the expected manufacturing duration. If the product does not reach the estimated product volume, then the IP user typically pays more for each usage of the IP core. Alternatively, if the expected product volume is exceeded, then the IP provider typically licenses each IP core at a lower fee or royalty. As a result, the fees paid by the IP user, and the royalties received by the IP provider, may be significantly different from what the parties originally bargained for.
In contrast, when an IP core is licensed on a per-usage basis, the IP provider and the IP user generally do not have to rely upon the expected product volume and/or the expected manufacturing duration, which can vary considerably from the original estimates. Further, per-usage licensing allows the IP user to spread the cost of licensing the IP core out over the product's manufacturing duration. However, even though per-usage usage licensing is generally fairer and more predictable than per-project licensing, per-usage licensing typically does not afford the IP provider a reliable way of accounting for the actual IP core usage, i.e., the number of IP cores that have employed in the manufacturing of an IC. For example, the IP provider may have to rely upon the IP user to give an accurate accounting of the number of IP cores used in various products.
Although there are software licensing systems available today for per-use monitoring of the execution of software applications, there remains a need for systems and methods for managing the secure delivery and reliable accounting of licensed circuit designs within target electronic circuits and devices.